In many cases, the end of the year gives you time to step back and take stock of the last 12 months. This is when many of us take a hard look at what worked and what did not, complete performance reviews, and formulate plans for the coming year. For me, it is all of those things plus a time when I u...

We have been seeing a sudden rise in the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL). It looks like the long “AI winter” is finally over.

According to IDC, AI-related hardware, software and services business will jump from $8B this year to $47B by 2020.

I have also read comments like, “AI is like the Internet in the mid 1990s and it will be pervasive this time”.

According to Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu, “AI is the new electricity. Just as 100 years ago electricity transformed industry after industry, AI will now do the same.”

Peter Lee, co-head at Microsoft Research said, “Sales teams are using neural nets to recommend which prospects to contact next or what kind of products to recommend.”

IBM Watson used AI in 2011, not DL. Now all 30 components are augmented by DL (investment from $500M – $6B in 2020).

Google had 2 DL projects in 2012, now it is more than 1000 (Search, Android, Gmail, Translation, Maps, YouTube, Self-driving cars,..).

It is interesting to note that AI was mentioned by Alan Turing in a paper he wrote back in 1950 to suggest that there is possibility to build machines with true intelligence. Then in 1956, John McCarthy organized a conference at Dartmounth and coined the phrase Artificial Intelligence. Much of the next three decades did not see much activity and hence the phrase “AI Winter” was coined. Around 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue won the chess match against Kasparov. During the last few years, we saw deployments such as Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and IBM’s Watson (beating Jeopardy game show champions in 2011). In 2014, DeepMind team used a deep learning algorithm to create a program to win Atari games.

During the last two years, use of this technology has accelerated greatly. The key players pushing AI/ML/DL are Nvidia, Baidu, Google, IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Yahoo, etc. Many new players have appeared – DeepMnd, Numenta, Nervana, MetaMind, AlchemyAPI, Sentient, OpenAI, SkyMind, Cortica, etc. These companies are all targets of acquisition by the big ones. Sunder Pichai of Google says, “Machine learning is a core transformative way in which we are rethinking everything we are doing.” Google’s products deploying these technologies are Visual Translation, RankBrain, Speech Recognition, Voicemail Transcription, Photo Search, Spam Filter, etc.

AI is the broadest term, applying to any technique that enables computers to mimic human intelligence, using logic, if-then rules, decision trees, and machine learning. The subset of AI that includes abstruse statistical techniques that enable machines to improve at tasks with experience is machine learning. A subset of machine learning called deep learning is composed of algorithms that permit software to train itself to perform tasks, like speech and image recognition, by exposing multi-layered neural networks to vast amounts of data.

I think the resurgence is a result of the confluence of several factors, like advanced chip technology such as Nvidia Pascal GPU architecture or IBM TrueNorth (brain-inspired computer chip), software architectures like microservice containers, ML libraries, and data analytics tool kits. Well-known academia are being heavily recruited by companies – Geoffrey Hinton of University of Toronto (Google), Yann LeCun of New York University (Facebook), Andrew Ng of Stanford (Baidu), Yoshua Bengio of University of Montreal, etc.

The outlook of AI / ML / DL is very bright and we will see some real benefits in every business sector.

Financial Technology - or FinTech - Is Now Part of the @CloudExpo Program!

Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 20th Cloud Expo at the Javits Center in New York, June 6-8, 2017, will find fresh new content in a new track called FinTech, which will incorporate machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and blockchain into one track.

Financial enterprises in New York City, London, Singapore, and other world financial capitals are embracing a new generation of smart, automated FinTech that eliminates many cumbersome, slow, and expensive intermediate processes from their businesses.

FinTech brings efficiency as well as the ability to deliver new services and a much improved customer experience throughout the global financial services industry. FinTech is a natural fit with cloud computing, as new services are quickly developed, deployed, and scaled on public, private, and hybrid clouds.

More than US$20 billion in venture capital is being invested in FinTech this year. Cloud Expo is pleased to bring you the latest FinTech developments as an integral part of our program, starting at the 20th International Cloud Expo in New York City on June 6-8, 2017.

All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices - computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors - connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades.

With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing Cloud strategies, now is the perfect time to attend @CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo, June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY and October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA. Learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is on the right path to Digital Transformation.

Delegates to Cloud Expo / @ThingsExpo will be able to attend 8 simultaneous, information-packed education tracks.

There are over 120 breakout sessions in all, with Keynotes, General Sessions, and Power Panels adding to three days of incredibly rich presentations and content.

Join Cloud Expo / @ThingsExpo conference chair Roger Strukhoff (@IoT2040), June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY and October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA for three days of intense Enterprise Cloud and 'Digital Transformation' discussion and focus, including Big Data's indispensable role in IoT, Smart Grids and (IIoT) Industrial Internet of Things, Wearables and Consumer IoT, as well as (new) Digital Transformation in Vertical Markets.

Financial Technology - or FinTech - Is Now Part of the @CloudExpo Program!

Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 20th Cloud Expo / @ThingsExpo June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY and October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA will find fresh new content in a new track called FinTech, which will incorporate machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and blockchain into one track.

Financial enterprises in New York City, London, Singapore, and other world financial capitals are embracing a new generation of smart, automated FinTech that eliminates many cumbersome, slow, and expensive intermediate processes from their businesses.

FinTech brings efficiency as well as the ability to deliver new services and a much improved customer experience throughout the global financial services industry. FinTech is a natural fit with cloud computing, as new services are quickly developed, deployed, and scaled on public, private, and hybrid clouds.

More than US$20 billion in venture capital is being invested in FinTech this year. @CloudExpo is pleased to bring you the latest FinTech developments as an integral part of our program, starting at the 20th International Cloud Expo June 6-8, 2017 in New York City and October 31 - November 2, 2017 in Silicon Valley.

The upcoming 20th International @CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo, June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY and October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA announces that its Call For Papers for speaking opportunities is open.

About Jnan DashJnan Dash is Senior Advisor at EZShield Inc., Advisor at ScaleDB and Board Member at Compassites Software Solutions. He has lived in Silicon Valley since 1979. Formerly he was the Chief Strategy Officer (Consulting) at Curl Inc., before which he spent ten years at Oracle Corporation and was the Group Vice President, Systems Architecture and Technology till 2002. He was responsible for setting Oracle's core database and application server product directions and interacted with customers worldwide in translating future needs to product plans. Before that he spent 16 years at IBM. He blogs at http://jnandash.ulitzer.com.

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